Across Europe, governments of right and left are implementing ‘austerity’ policies. The claim that excessive government debt and ‘unaffordable’ welfare and services require extraordinary cuts in public spending is being used to legitimise the biggest post-1945 assault on the living standards and hard-won rights of the working class in Europe.

Resistance to this assault – through mass actions and by presenting a political and economic alternative – is the most mass task of the class struggle in the continent today.